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9.29.2009

the harvest

There was frost the other night, there had to be. Nothing else could send me out the doors, even before I had my morning coffee, to check on the veggies that didn't get harvested yet. There were a lot of wilted leaves but thankfully the few cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and green onions that we had left were fine. But the real winner of the harvest came from a last minute planting that we did, a simple root vegetable.

Back in early June on planting day, I was taking a lunch break in the kitchen and noticed our bag of organic red potatoes had sprouted. In a moment of spontaneity I decided that I would just plant the potatoes since they were already seeding. I know it's not protocol, I probably should have gone to the local nursery and picked up a proper box of seed potatoes and do it the way the regular folk do it. But in my thinking, potatoes were not on my list of things to grow this year and here I had a bag of potatoes that would have otherwise ended up in the compost pile, why not use them instead of going to waste? Determined to plant the potatoes, I set out for some information through the scholarly google. I found this on videojug, it seemed straight forward enough: dig a trench, put the whole potatoe in the ground about 15 cm (6 inches) deep, eyes up, cover with soil and let them grow. That was 3+ months ago.

Yesteday while harvesting the vegetables, we noticed a few potatoes peaking out on the surface. A quick dig revealed that there wasn't just a few but a whole harvest of large delightful red potatoes. We filled not one but two bowls, definitely more than 20 lbs...who would have thought? And since they originated from organic potatoes I can happily say they are organic. Not too bad for this unplanned potato planter. You can guess what we will planting again next year, the crop that stole my heart.